Harare - Student leaders in Zimbabwe have called on opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to return to the country to share in the plight of his fellow citizens and provide leadership ahead of the June 27 presidential run-off.

Addressing the media in Harare, Zimbabwe National Students Union president Clever Bere said the country was feeling the absence of Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) leader Tsvangirai.

"His absence is causing more harm than good to the struggle. We call upon the president (Tsvangirai) to return and face the treatment other Zimbabweans are getting," said Bere.

Tsvangirai left Zimbabwe shortly after the March 29 presidential elections in which he defeated longtime President Robert Mugabe but failed to garner an outright majority.

During his absence, hundreds of MDC members and supporters have been brutalized by pro-Mugabe militia. The party says 43 of its members have been killed. Isolated incidents of retaliatory MDC violence has also been reported.

Tsvangirai, meanwhile, has been flitting between African capitals in a bid to court support, initially for his election victory claim, and now that he has agreed to enter a run-off for his conditions for participating.

He had been scheduled to return to Zimbabwe last weekend but postponed it, claiming an assassination plot against him by Mugabe's government. The government has dismissed the claims as "frivolous."

Reacting to the students' calls for Tsvangirai's return, MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa: "It is not that the president is on some holiday or luxury escapade."

"We would want him back and he will be back soon, but realities on the ground have to be considered first," he said.

The MDC leader is believed to be in talks with regional leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on the deployment of international observers to the June 27 run-off.

The government barred most Western observers and journalists from witnessing the first round of voting and said the same conditions will prevail for the run-off.

Meanwhile Tuesday, Tsvangirai condemned attacks on African migrants in South Africa, saying Zimbabweans were bearing the brunt of the violence which has claimed at least 23 lives in nine days.

"The MDC believes in African solidarity and regional integration and condemns those self-serving elements behind these attacks on foreign nationals," he said in a e-mailed statement.

Zimbabwe were being doubly victimized because they had fled to South Africa not by choice but because of the violence and economic hardship inflicted by Mugabe's rule, he said.

The economic chaos sparked by Mugabe's populist policies are blamed for sending around 3 million Zimbabweans into exile over the past decade, mostly to South Africa. (dpa)